Katie Von Schleicher – Life’s A Lie

Katie Von Schleicher’s 2015 mini-album was called ‘Bleaksploitation’. It sounds like it would be a pretty gloom-laden affair but, in fact, the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter weaved her often dark songs around hazy pop-laden hooks. Fresh off the back of touring the UK with Aldous Harding, Katie’s now gearing up to debut LP proper, ‘Shitty Hits’, on 28th July via Full Time Hobby. The album is set to explore themes of isolation and powerlessness, but boy does Katie sound anything but on ‘Life’s A Lie’. Wrapped in warmth and the kind of lo-fi, gauzy tone of home recordings (the album was created on a Tascan 488 tape machine in Katie’s childhood home in Maryland), the slightly wonky piano and strident percussion on ‘Life’s A Lie’ brims with a confidence that stands in almost complete contrast to Katie’s lyrics. “I want to hire you and save your place in my hand/ and I’ll take you around then”, she sings. This is but a fleeting dream though, and she almost instantly stops her mind from running away by declaring “but I’m a fraud and I know I can’t do it alone”, racked with nerves. As Katie herself says: “The narrative is from that unrestrained inner voice, the self-critic, which has the power to isolate you from the good stuff. In practice, this all happens on a subconscious level, that’s why I thought it apt to be paired with the most joyful sounding track on the record”. With this juxtaposition, Katie’s created a complex and supremely confident look at the hardships of hidden anxiety.